You can have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and even a LinkedIn business profile, but there’s no point in running a social media campaign if it’s not designed to drive leads to your business. Learn more in the eBook.Download now!

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Google has answered the prayers of millions of users. But what does this mean for the general public and marketers alike? Google has been slowly moving itself away from Google+, its failed social network, yet made a sudden announcement this week: Google+ forced integration with YouTube will no longer exist .

Google has just published new figures that illustrate the platform’s substantial year-on-year growth. The time spent viewing YouTube videos has increased by 60% year-on-year (Q2 2015 compared to Q2 2014). This growth can be explained mainly by the use of mobile platforms, where users spend an average of 40 minutes per session, a 50% increase compared to the previous year.

Vertical videos are irritating in such a small way that it seems petty to complain about them, but that isn't going to stop me from doing so. The scourge of casually filmed footage, vertical video is what happens when someone shoots something with their smart phone and holds it in the typical vertical fashion.

The rise of the huge YouTube celebrity in the past few years is usually discussed in the context of youth marketing, and basically how the kids are these days with their YouTubing and such and such tend to care more about their little videos than traditional marketing efforts like celebrity endorsements. Well, now that grumpy-old-man logic can be applied to adults as well.

It’s no secret that some of the biggest up and coming celebrities today aren’t known for their movies or music - but for the videos they post on YouTube documenting their daily lives. YouTubers have managed to take a totally digital consumer experience and showcase the best modern examples of client retention and brand loyalty - with their ‘product’ being consumed entirely through a screen. Where these social media celebrities have the upper hand is how they can acutely define and adapt to their current and ideal consumer demographics. After all, the business of YouTube is not producing videos - it’s straight up advertising.

New research has suggested that Facebook is closing in on YouTube and it's long-held dominance of online video advertising. So does this mean YouTube is done? While there's still a long way to go in this battle, the signs do suggest that YouTube has a serious fight on it's hands, a position it's not been in before.

For a while now, beauty gurus and lifestyle vloggers on YouTube have been the new influencer stars, but the landscape of the cosmos is changing a bit. Michelle Phan has been long thought to be queen of the YouTube beauty gurus, with her own L’Oreal makeup line, Em Cosmetics, a style guide book, and a Birchbox-like subscription service, Ipsy. But younger faces have been climbing the YouTube beauty guru ranks, and in the past couple of months, Phan’s subscription and views numbers have been overtaken by two YouTubers in particular: Bethany Mota and Zoe Sugg, both solidly in the range of 8 million subscribers to Phan’s 7 million.

Time may have declared YouTube’s everyday user the “Person of the Year” in 2006, but advertising and marketing’s adoption of the channel has proven just as powerful. Last year, almost half of the top 10 most-watched videos on YouTube were ads. Market permeation is clear: it’s rare that an agency won’t leak their Super Bowl video on YouTube days before, becoming a YouTube star is a common millennial aspiration, and video content is the new black when it comes to marketing of all stripes. So to celebrate YouTube’s ten-year anniversary, in partnership with the Webby awards, they asked users to vote for the best ads of the decade. The top five results are a tour through some of the most inventive ads in recent memory and each has a marketing lesson in it.